Over the past few weeks, Flamingo Class have been researching what life was like for sailors on board a Tudor Explorer’s ship. We expected to hear stories of great discoveries and valuable treasure…we were in for a shock! Life on board a Tudor Ship could be awful! Tales of scrubbing the deck, sitting for hours in the Crow’s Nest, being locked up ‘In Irons’ and getting ill with scurvy was not what we had in mind!
We used all the evidence from our research to write a Ship’s Log from the point of view of an ordinary Tudor sailor. They tell the real story of life aboard a ship…battles with enemy ships, harsh punishments for drinking too much rum, eating mouldy fruit and being very, very tired! You’ll find them all in our accounts of life at sea!
When we had completed our Ship’s Log, we had a lot of fun ageing them. Anyone would think they really were 500 years old! Pop by our class to take a look and see some photos here: yr-4-ships-log-photos
Our top 3 facts about life at sea during the Tudor period:
1) Ferdinand Magellan, the great Portuguese explorer who led the first round the world voyage, didn’t even tell his sailors where they were going before they set sail. He was worried that they wouldn’t come if they knew what he was planning!
2) It’s not surprising he didn’t tell them! Only 18 of the original 270 sailors returned home to Portugal. Magellan himself died in battle in the Philippines.
3) After a few weeks at sea, all the water on board the ship would have gone bad. Ships carried with them barrels of watery beer, as the alcohol helped to preserve the water and stop it from going bad. For months on end, sailors had nothing to drink other than beer! And if they drank too much, they might end up ‘in irons’ as a punishment!